Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/174

 170 as in the Monitor, the proportionate length of the tail was much diminished by the comparative shortness of the body of each vertebræ; the effect of this variation being to give strength to a shorter tail as an organ for swimming; and a rapidity of movement, which would have been unattainable by the long and slender tail of the Monitor, which assists that animal in climbing. There is a further provision to give strength to the tail, by the chevron bones being soldered to the body of each vertebra, as in fishes.

The total number of vertebræ was one hundred and thirty-three, nearly the same as in the Monitors, and more than double the number of those in the Crocodiles. The ribs had a single head, and were round, as in the family of Lizards. Of the extremities, sufficient fragments have been found to prove that the Mosasaurus, instead of legs, had four large paddles, resembling those of the Plesiosaurus and the Whale: one great use of these was probably to assist in raising the animal to the surface, in order to breathe, as it apparently had not the horizontal tail, by means of which the Cetacea ascend for this purpose. All these characters unite to show that the Mosasaurus was adapted to live entirely in the water, and that although it was of such vast proportions compared with the living genera of these families, it formed a link intermediate between the Monitors and the Iguanas. However strange it may appear to find its dimensions so much exceeding those of any existing Lizards, or to find marine genera in the order of Saurians, in which there exists at this time no species capable of living in the sea; it is scarcely less strange than the analogous deviations in the Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, which afford examples of still greater expansion of the type of the Monitor and Iguana, into colossal forms adapted to move upon the land. Throughout all these variations of proportion, we trace the persistence of the same laws, which regulate the formation of living genera, and from the combinations of perfect mechanism that have, in all times, resulted